John McCain had two good days late last week. It had been a while. On Thursday, Sarah Palin performed well enough in her debate with Joe Biden to quiet the critics. And, on Friday, the House of Representatives voted in favor of the federal bailout, which the Senate had passed two days earlier. Palin wasn't flawless and the bailout is imperfect. But three days into October, McCain finally had hope that he had stopped his September slide.

But it may not be that easy. The economy will get worse--maybe significantly worse--before it gets better. Over the next month, a series of reports on the health of the economy will be released--and none of them will be good. By a two-to-one margin voters blame Republicans for these problems.

The bad economic news has resulted in bad political news. The Real Clear Politics average of national polls has McCain trailing Barack Obama by nearly 6 points. The state polls are even more worrisome. McCain is down in Florida, down in Pennsylvania, down in Ohio, even down in Virginia. He has largely pulled out of Michigan--once believed to be a winnable light blue state--and he is fighting hard in Indiana and North Carolina, two states that Republicans win without trying in most years. On September 10, the first Gallup daily tracking poll conducted entirely after the Republican convention gave McCain a 5-point national lead. On October 3, the first day of the rest of the campaign, the same tracking poll had him down 7 points.

"As a general matter, we need to get this race back to being about Obama," says one senior adviser to McCain. A second agrees and points to Tuesday's debate as a key opportunity. "Part of what this debate is about, and the home stretch is about, is focusing the attention on Obama."

It's a strategy that has worked before. And it worked in a political environment that looks, in many ways, like this one.

In 1976, the country was still divided over an unpopular war, the U.S. intelligence community was the source of great controversy, there were deep concerns about the rising cost of energy, and the economy was in bad shape. Republican party identification was down. Democratic registration was up. The Republican running that year was a moderate, who was mistrusted by conservatives and who did not want to be associated with his predecessor. The Democrat was new to national politics and almost deified by the media. In mid-July 1976, a Gallup poll had Gerald Ford down 33 points to Jimmy Carter.

Ford's top strategists drafted a 121-page memo for the candidate. "We firmly believe that you can win in November," it declared, with an optimism that must have seemed naïve. The memo described the difficulties facing the campaign--many of which mirror the challenges Barack Obama presents the McCain campaign in 2008. Among them:

* Jimmy Carter has experienced a "rapid rise in national popularity" due largely to his "enormous (media) popularity," which persists despite the fact that he lost "eight out of the last eleven contested primary fights."
* The Democratic Party enjoys a 43% to 21% advantage. A GOP candidate will always have difficulty closing a large gap on a Democratic opponent.
* Campaign expenditures for both candidates will be the same. We no longer have the previous advantage of being able to outspend our opponent. This is a particular handicap when we are behind.
* Carter's popularity is based almost exclusively on his awareness factor. His support is very thin and clearly very vulnerable to deterioration.
* It is Carter's "newness" and his image as a winner that has carried him to the heights he has reached thus far.